AMAZING GRACE ADAMS by Fran Littlewood
Amazing Grace Adams is a story that had much promise and could have been, well, amazing. Instead, it was just OK.
Amazing Grace Adams is the debut novel of English author and journalist Fran Littlewood, and has recently been released to much fanfare.
The story takes its inspiration from the 1993 film Falling Down starring Michael Douglas, which I have never seen. It’s a day in the life of Grace Adams, polyglot and mother, who is having a really, really bad day.
The chapters are interspersed with flashback chapters, mostly told from Grace’s perspective, about her meeting her husband, Ben, the birth of her child Lotte and other events during the previous 17 years which lead to this particularly bad day.
There are several things about the book which I didn’t understand. First, the font size is large - maybe 14pt or 16pt and although this is great for readers who maybe be vision impaired, it feels deceptive insofar as it suggests the book is longer than it is. At a normal font size, the book would look thin and I suspect the concern was readers might believe the story is insubstantial.
The reason this is a problem is that the story is, for too long, insubstantial. It takes far too long to introduce the background to why Grace Adams reacts on this particular day the way she does, and the multilayered grief driving that. What this means is that it is three-quarters of the way through the story that we start to feel any empathy for Grace. Until then, she just seems like a hot mess who needs a psychiatrist and a reality check. I have to confess that I forced myself to continue reading the story because I felt there had to be some reason for Grace’s breakdown and that she wasn’t just really annoying.
That reason presents itself eventually, and makes her a far more empathetic character and her actions a little more understandable. However, it comes so far into the book that I suspect a lot of people would give up, as I was tempted to do.
I do like the story though - and I think Littlewood could have told Grace’s story in a way that allowed for her breakdown on the day while giving readers a reason to root for Grace earlier on. When the reasons finally present themselves, it is not so much a plot point as a relief.
Amazing Grace Adams is a story that had much promise and could have been, well, amazing. Instead, it was just OK.